We are the Vampires! We pay homage to our dead drunk friends!” So hollers snake-bothering devil-rocker (and committed golfer) Alice Cooper from the Swiss stage, the lack of obvious comma after “dead” meaning it’s unclear whether his pals are extremely inebriated or are boozehounds no longer with us. It’s probably both.
This is the clarion call from the frontman and lead “bloodsucker” in Hollywood Vampires. It opens the new live album, recorded at the 2018 Montreux Jazz Festival, by the rock’n’roll supergroup he formed in 2012. They’re named after the infamous Los Angeles celebrity drinking club that Cooper founded in the 1970s with Keith Moon, Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr, John Belushi and other Sunset Strip reprobates. Theirs was an after-hours association headquartered in a private loft at The Rainbow Bar and Grill, where meetings revolved around which version of Moon would turn up that evening; no one could count minutes far less take them, and AOB stood for “any other booze?”.
“If Keith was in town, we would wait to see who he was going to be that night,” says Cooper of the maniacal Who drummer who succumbed to his addictions, aged 32, in 1978. “Was he going to be Queen Elizabeth? The Groucho Marx version of Hitler? A Viking?
“But the funny thing was, you also had people like Micky Dolenz from The Monkees,” continues Cooper, clearly a welcoming host happy to give a pass to a perky pop star from a manufactured boyband. “There were actors — Jack Nicholson was there. It was a very eclectic group.”
The OG Hollywood Vampires, patently, wasn’t the most exclusive of clubs. You didn’t have to be a rocker, just a party animal. As Cooper sings — altogevva now! — on Vampires song My Dead Drunk Friends: “We drink and we fight and we fight and we drink / and we puke and we drink and we fight / we puke and we drink and then we DIE!”
Well, he says that… Unlike most of the founding members of their namesake club, Hollywood Vampires is a band very much comprising the undead, a bunch of survivors of rock’n’roll, addiction and/or the court of public opinion: Cooper, 78, on guitar and most lead vocals; Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, 75, on guitar; regular Cooper sidekick Tommy Henriksen, 62, on more guitars; and Johnny Depp, 63, on yet more guitars.
Now, here they are, at the ungodly hour of breakfast time in America, Cooper at home in Phoenix, Perry at home in Miami. The gnarly old bros, hair as defiantly long as Cooper’s mascara is thick, are lifting the (coffin) lid on their storied pasts and talking up the (post-sunset) pleasures to be had on Hollywood Vampires’ upcoming UK tour.
Perry explains that he and Cooper, as fellow arena-filling veterans of hard rock’s 1970s and 1980s heyday, had “crossed paths a few times”. But his call-up to the ranks of Hollywood Vampires happened via Depp. Very much not cancelled at Vampires HQ, he’s a buddy they portray as a serious guitarist with an acting hobby.
“I was staying at Johnny’s, working on a solo album,” begins Perry, explaining that Depp had turned his garage into a busy studio. “That’s why it took two years to get the solo album done! Because it was too much fun to be able to go down into his studio and see who was playing.”
One of those inhabitants was Cooper, a shock-rocker (the make-up, the snakes, the four-handicap at golf, the upcoming memoir titled Devil on My Shoulder) beloved forever on account of rock staples School’s Out and Welcome to my Nightmare. “Johnny said, ‘Listen, I’m down here with Alice, and we’re doing this Hollywood Vampires thing.’ And of course, my gear is all set up because I’m playing in the studio all the time. So, wow, Alice and I, finally we get to play together.”
With 200 million record sales between them, Cooper and Perry’s rocker credentials are scarcely in question. But how deep are Depp’s? “He’s a very smart guitar player. He plays a bit like Keith Richards,” insists Cooper. “That feel — it’s the feel that you can’t teach. And he had it, man, all the way. And still does.”
“People get over the fact that it’s Johnny, they realise he’s the real deal”
Joe Perry
“You can tell Johnny loves the music,” chips in Perry. “I’ve seen pictures of him in his first band in Florida. He’s got that look. He’s driven. You understand why he went to LA to be in a rock band,” the Aerosmith man says of Depp’s pre-silver-screen teen dreams with The Kids.
Still, even Depp knew true rock headz would be ready to judge a divisive figure who puts the wrong kind of Hollywood into Hollywood Vampires. “He was definitely wondering if he could pull it off,” admits Perry. “And I’ll tell you: after the first couple of songs, and people get over the fact that it’s Johnny, they realise he’s the real deal. He’s like the rest of us. We own our instruments.”
Over the years, various guest players have had a stake in the Vampires (not in that way). Dave Grohl and Slash have stepped up, as has Paul McCartney. For the gang’s 2015 self-titled debut album, Macca joined them in the studio to play and sing his 1969 composition Come and Get It. “He walks in, goes over to the piano and sits down facing the wall. All of us go like this,” relates Cooper, pantomiming his jaw dropping. “He says, ‘I wrote this song for Badfinger, but you guys should do it,’” he continues. “And he starts playing it. And we did it in two takes. And I said: “Paul McCartney, that was the coolest thing ever!’” Even cooler: he let them see his hallowed Höfner bass. “He brings it out and it’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark!” marvels Cooper. “It’s glowing. And he throws it to me. What?! This is like a Stradivarius!”
The late Christopher Lee also lent his vocals to that first album, on opening track and Depp co-write, The Last Vampire. “He was very heavy metal,” raves Cooper. “We got him to read this part of Dracula where he goes [Dracula impersonation]: ‘Listen to them, the children of the night, what music they make…’ And then BAM!, that starts the whole show right there, that big power chord.”
In their salutes to fallen comrades and hymns to bygone benders, not to mention their commitment to the rock’n’roll cause, Hollywood Vampires are, in many ways, the last men standing. But how? What do their dressing-room riders look like?
“I have the smallest rider of all time,” says Cooper. “Diet Cokes. Throwing knife. That’s it.”
Chucking around a pointy thing, it transpires, is how Cooper gets in the zone pre-show. “Here’s the funny thing,” he says. “Every lead singer I know has a weird idiosyncrasy. Peter Frampton irons. Roger Daltrey practices fly fishing. Rob Zombie plays the worst disco music I’ve ever heard in my life.”
As for Perry, he’s looking forward to coming to the UK because we have the finest stash known to man. “My main thing is ginger beer. Some of the best is in England.”
Hence these shock-rockers’ biggest shock: their entire backstage is sober. “Absolutely,” avers Cooper. “It’s so funny because now, if you’re in a big touring band, you don’t hire a guy that’s undependable. You can’t kill it every night if you’re stoned from whatever you’re doing. In the 1970s, you didn’t hire a guy unless he was high!”
“I’m 78. I’ve never felt better in my life”
Alice Cooper
Cooper grins. “Look: we’re survivors. I’m 78. I’ve never felt better in my life. I haven’t had a drink in 43 years. And I’m getting paid back for that now. I can get up and do it every night. I’m in two or three different bands right now, and never felt better.”
They are Hollywood Vampires, then, and they’re here for a good time and a long time. So, given this rock’n’roll royalty’s revolving door policy to special guests, which members of Britain’s actual royalty would make the grade on their UK tour? “I think Kate is probably a closet rocker,” reckons Cooper. “We say everybody’s invited up there. Just let us know what song you want to sing.”
One is curious about what song the Princess of Wales would do… “Well,” says Cooper with a wolfish grin, “it wouldn’t be Welcome to My Nightmare.”
Hollywood Vampires’ UK tour starts at The O2 on August 12; At Montreux Jazz Festival is out August 7; Devil on My Shoulder is published on October 8
